Love. It’s everything.
Twenty years ago I was misdiagnosed with a fatal heart condition. I was told I had 3-5 years to live and at that point I would need a heart transplant, or I would die. My husband worked nights and I would sit up at night, listening to my heart beat, writing letters to my children. By the fifth letter I found that the most important thing I wanted them to know was that I loved them. The other things I came up with paled in importance. Two weeks later, I sat with a cardiologist in the hospital echo lab and learned that I had a perfectly healthy heart. I changed doctors and figured out the real problem. Then I celebrated my reprieve from doom while my children slept, and my husband was at work, by watching the letters burn in the wood stove. Hindsight suggests that I should have kept them for my kids, just in case…but, what I learned from writing them was that all that mattered was love.
Twelve years before my Dad passed away he took me to lunch. It was the week of Valentine’s Day and he gave me a bracelet, plastic beads with cupids and hearts, I assume my mother picked it up at the Hallmark Store and handed him as he walked out the door. Still, I treasure it. Dad was getting ready for bypass surgery and wanted to spend some time with me, to “make sure nothing is left unsaid.” He told me he was aware of the risks of the surgery and that he just wanted me to know that if the worst happened, it was ok and most of all that he loved me. Now that he’s gone, I find great comfort in that.
My dad loved me, and that is everything.
This is Anna Inspired.
